


Who's That?

by PaulaMcG



Series: Grimmauld Place [7]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Community: firewhiskeyfic, Drunk Writing, Lust, M/M, Memories, Memory Loss, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to canon events in January 1996
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25732138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: What's he talking about? When there's the one bed waiting.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Grimmauld Place [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740949
Kudos: 7





	Who's That?

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Firewhiskey Fic Quarantine Edition in July 2020. The prompts were _Neville Longbottom, Grimmauld Place, "There's only one bed", Devil's Snare and Blocked Floo_. Having checked some canon facts beforehand, I felt confident I'd manage to include all the prompts while simply channelling my OotP-era angsty Sirius. The original drunk version with his post-Azkaban incoherency reflected in my tipsy typoing can be read [here](https://firewhiskeyfic.dreamwidth.org/40801.html) in the Dreamwidth community.

“Who's that?” What's he talking about?

Whatever my Moony's talking about, I don't really care. Now we know who I am. Seriously, I can remember that much.

And after the other Christmas guests left, just when he couldn't really make me believe there was no other bed, I let him do enough tricks with his hands, and now I know I want more. His hands and his wand and all. Even though I can't quite remember how I wanted him before. Fourteen years ago. Yes, I remember all the numbers. Twelve years in Azkaban and two out, and only the last six months trying to construct more than a fasade of sanity.

Not easy in this prison. But I'm doing better – yes, that's what I always want, to do better – than two days ago. His voice makes me get up from this hard unrelenting couch and not even see my mother the devil stand in front of me and twist her wand... no, only see her glide towards the poison-coloured drapes, with the trail of her robes as a snare, a wreathing serpent behind.

I stumble across the room and fall to sit on the piano stool. Yes, there's a piano here in the drawing room. Believe me, I can remember and even play, as the music lessons with mother were too awful to forget. I just didn't show it to Harry. My Moony helped me remember and try again like other things with hands.

Now I start playing so that I won't have to talk. I still don't like talking, particularly not answering questions, and that's why I ask to let him talk. “What's that? Who...”

“Neville.” Oh, his voice is beautiful.

“It's all so beautiful,” I sing as he taught me last time. Freddie Mercury's last song.

“Neville Longbottom.” Now he sounds a bit impatient.

All right. Easy enough. I can reply. “Oh, Neville. I know. Frank's baby, and Alice's.”

“No baby,” my Moony says tenderly, “almost sixteen.”

Sixteen. I'm sixteen when mother taps her wand on the tapestry. “Still two cousins available, now on their way here to an engagement party.” And I run. Then I become the dog for him, and the dog managed to escape even from Azkaban. So why am I back here? And now he's told me the news that the scary cousin has escaped and... rallied around Black – that's me.

Now someone's caught me. A hand behind my neck. No!

No, it's his hand, and he's helped me unlearn my fear of touch, taught this stray dog to want his touch again. I'm leaning back against his hand and I stop playing, as I want to go and play with him in that only bed. Why does he need to talk?

“Neville could have recognised the Devil's Snare even if I didn't.” 

The snare... A plant that killed someone at St Mungo's. Yes, I remember he told me that piece of news, too. Now I must get out of this room. I want his arms around me but not here where evil will's still breathing behind the drapes, with snakes ready to strangle me.

I shove him back, get up and grab his hand and stride to the door and out and... We're sixteen when we start walking hand in hand, and that's not a perfectly happy memory, not taken by the Dementors because I'm afraid someone will see, though our hands are hidden, his long knitted woollen scarf entwined around them. 

“I could talk...”

Don't, I mean to say but maybe I don't because I've got him inside the bedroom now, the only bedroom as far as I'm concerned, and closed the door behind us and pushed him against it to snog him in the way we used to do in closets.

“To Amelia about it. I wonder if she, too, has visited Frank and Alice and realised that Bode was strangled at the same ward, in the same room.”

“Who's that?” Why am I asking? Old habit from before I knew I wanted to fuck him.

“Amelia Bones. I could talk to her through the floo now.”

Was that his girlfriend? “The bedroom floo's blocked.” Six months ago he suggested that and named this our bedroom. Our bed.

“Sorry. Of course not now. I just feel guilty. My fault I distracted him on my visit last time. Otherwise he'd have noticed. He's brilliant at Herbology, Neville.”

Now I see the wrinkles around his warm amber eyes and around his grinning mouth. And I know he's not sixteen. He knows it's no use feeling guilty. I know it's no use feeling jealous. No time for that. There's enough work in taking off his cloak and robes and cardigan, so that I can feel his skin all against mine and feel we're both still alive and beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic is set two days after [Precarious Treasure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716893).


End file.
